Hybrid work. Asynchronous work. The right etiquette in online meetings. The way we work in 2022 looks very different to the way we worked before the pandemic.

As much as we love the pros of working from home, the cons are increasingly evident – working longer hours, even more multitasking and pressure to perform to prove your worth when there’s no-one to see you hard at work.

But leadership development and wellbeing specialist Lana Hindmarch says this is a flawed strategy: ‘It’s not the number of hours but the value I bring to those hours that matters. This then shifts the conversation from a focus on time to focus on energy.’

The Oxford Dictionary defines energy as the strength and vitality required for sustained physical or mental activity. To maintain healthy energy levels and increase your energy, it's important to remember the importance of sometimes doing less to be able to do more later and make a more meaningful contribution.

The connection between your energy levels and focused work

When you’re tired and your energy levels are low, you can't concentrate and do focused work. It's that simple.

And focused work, experts and researchers believe, is the real key to managing a crammed diary and getting on top of a seemingly overwhelming to-do list. Professor Liesl Zühlke, Vice President of the South African Medical Research Council concurs.

‘I put time in my diary every day for thinking (high-level strategic brain work), preparation (for talks and presentations) and time out – which is when I do focused breathing or a workout with free weights or exercise bands in my office. If you don’t schedule these things, you’ll always think you don’t have time for them.’

Don’t confuse performance and perfection

In his latest book, The Heart of Business, Hubert Joly – the CEO who turned the ailing US retailer Best Buy around – stresses striving to be perfect and to do everything perfectly can make you feel even more overwhelmed with work.

‘In large companies, success was largely about being smart and not making mistakes. Everything was geared toward making perfection the ideal to strive for. But while aiming for outstanding business performance is a good thing, expecting human perfection is not,’ he says.

Joly suggests that you ask yourself how many times you’ve taken on more work to show others that you’re the smartest person in the room or wanted to win in every situation or systematically inserted yourself, unnecessarily, when there was a problem that had to be solved.

‘Forgive yourself for the things you don’t get to and learn how to say “no”. Don’t apologise like you’ve done something wrong. Instead say that you’re overcommitted right now and can’t take this on. Taking back your power will make you feel more in control,’ advises Professor Zühlke.

How to be more productive without being more exhausted

To increase your energy and deliver your best work requires a change in mindset. Hindmarch refers to it as a fundamental shift in the way you think about not just what you do but how you do it.

Start with these 3 tips for getting the most from meetings.

• Introduce meeting-free days. Meeting-free Fridays has become popular in many organisations as this creates breathing room to round out the week’s tasks, prepare for the coming week and ensure that work doesn’t bleed into the weekend.
• Limit the duration of meetings. Professor Zühlke recommends 30–45 minutes per meeting.

Do not schedule back-to-back meetings. You need at least 15 minutes in between to think about what was discussed, jot down a few notes and take a breath before launching into another meeting. If you're dashing from one meeting to the next, you will feel even more overwhelmed.

f you want more insights and views on the world of big and small business, workplace wellness and employee wellbeing, read the latest issue of MiNDSPACE magazine here..